Playdough Self Portrait

We've made self portraits with paint, pen and ink, and by cutting construction paper.  We even tried it on the magnet board.  This version wasn't permanent, but I think it was our favorite :)

Happy Fall!

We picked up some twigs at the park this morning & if you give us some twigs we're going to start thinking art project :)  This was inspired by some trees on helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com.  We used a canvas board and tempera paint for the background.  Then Ella glued the twig on for the tree and added tissue paper balls.

Ella and the Seven Dresses-Part 2

Dresses finished.  Glue dry.  Time to turn it into something to play with.  (Oh - and maybe throw some days of the week and color word recognition in as well!)

Ella painted our cardboard paper doll that we had used to trace the dresses.  Then we added a photograph of her face for the doll's head.  

I wrote out simple sentences using Ella's name and the color dress she would wear for each day of the week.  For the cover, I glued on a simple pocket to hold the doll.  Then we headed to the copy shop to have the pages bound into a book.  Finally, we added velcro to the doll, each dress, and each page of our book.  

Ella and the Seven Dresses

Ella loves fashion.  Every day she walks in wearing an adorable dress and clutching her backpack which holds one or two more for her to change into when the mood strikes her.  She has informed me that she plans to become a fashion designer one day and is encouraging me to add sewing to her Pre-K curriculum this year :)

I knew that Ella would adore Hannah and the Seven Dresses by Marthe Jocelyn.  And she did - except for the ending.  Hannah ends up wearing pants.  Ella wanted me to leave that part off when I read it for a second time (at her request).  Hannah may be swayed by the comfort of pants - but not Ella.  No, she is a dress girl through and through.

I asked Ella if she'd like to design some dresses using scrapbook paper/supplies and she was ecstatic.  I'd planned on just doing a few at a time but Ella was a dress designing machine.  She didn't stop until we'd finished all 7!  She did a fantastic job sorting through materials and matching colors.  Her only complaint was that it took too long for the glue to dry - she wanted to play with them right away!

What we did:  I used a cardboard template of a paper doll and we traced around her on patterned scrapbook paper.  Ella decided if the dresses should be sleeveless, short-sleeved, or long.  I cut the dresses out and then Ella went to town with glue and buttons, rick-rack, yarn, fabric flowers, and other things from my scrapbook stash.  Stay tuned . . . this project continues on Monday :)

ella's stickers

Flexible.  Such an important word.  Right up there with compromise.  Important for children - but also for adults.  Today I let Ella choose some stickers for an art project.  She loved some pretty embossed flowers.  She loved them so much, in fact, that she wanted to take them home.  Intact.  All of them :)
That may not have been an option for me in the classroom but it is an option this year.  I'm glad.

Reusable Number Book

Ella had so much fun making her own number book.  To make this project you need:  7 sheets of laminated card stock, assorted stickers, dry-erase crayons, and a Sharpie.

I numbered the pages with the Sharpie.  Ella used her dry-erase crayons to copy and added the correct number of stickers to each page.  Because the book is laminated,  you can erase the crayon and peel off the stickers so the book can be used over and over again.  I had the book bound at a copy shop for $1.50 but you could just hole punch pages and use a book clip to hold the pages together.